You Can Give It Away

In the last four years little gustatory pleasure
I’m at JFK airport drinking a white wine cooler
Trying to write in a notebook ungamely white
Iterated motel-like walls
With a relief on them of a red girl sailing
I’m waiting for a plane to Luxembourg May ‘87
To be a poet for a week in Europe
In my natural history
I can’t find the bottom of my glass where I see through
Clearly to more than a pluvial dampness
Of my original self
Who was ever here?
That modern reddish girl on the wall’s ill-starred to be remains
Of a fashioning impulse:
Bad art
Am I bad art?
I’m going away to find you
I haven’t written well for a while, which do I want more
Poetry or life? I will want you quickly, not so much as if
I saw through a glass to only you
But as if we were both
The walls of my glass without you I’m no structure
To hold the form
Of scrutiny itself I’ve no eyes’ sides
Go to Luxembourg Hurry
It’s foreign and take a nap
Go to festival party
Poets arriving, “Here come the English,” says someone, “they
go off and drink a lot”
There you are
With Wendy, Allen, Ken, all serious-faced out the window
You buy me a langouste later—How long will this take? three
more nights
Till we leave for Paris together
But in Luxembourg still myself I buy socks
Eat at McDonald’s alone, amused
In predestined Paris
You have a Blue Lagoon
I have a Kir Royale, then Duck
There’s something I have to tell you
In two more days that I’ve given you myself
I mean if I think of going back alone it—myself—isn’t there anymore
I panic slightly walk out get lost
Between your place
And the Grands Magazins
I’ve already given it to you
So if I can’t give it to you
It’s lost somewhere, and I am mechanics
Who’s speaking
Who’s watching inside me?
(I will get myself back
By giving me away)